Kalisto On When He Found Out About First WWE US Championship Reign

Kalisto found out he was winning the WWE United States Championship on very short notice, as he recently revealed. The WWE alumnus, who competes as Samuray Del Sol on the indies, recently appeared on the Pain Clinic Pro Wrestling Talk Show and talked about beating Alberto Del Rio for the title back in January 2016.

“I found out last minute, maybe like an hour before the show started,” he recalled (per Fightful). “With WWE, you have to be ready for anything. Always stay ready, no matter what, because something can come up real quick. ‘Hey, you have a segment with John Cena.’ ‘Oh, okay, what are we doing?’ They tell you what you’re doing and it goes from there. ‘You have a match.’ ‘Alright cool.’ They don’t tell you until the very end. Right before curtain, they could tell you. You have to think on the fly, hearing the crowd, feed off them.”

He continued, “When I won the title, it was well worth it because I was working with one of the best out there. Alberto Del Rio, he took me to another level that I didn’t even know I could reach. There are so many eyes, and Vince [Vince McMahon] watching me from the back, directly, to see if I could hang with the sharks or not. That day, I did. It was one of the best moments of my life. I didn’t believe it, at first, until I got the title in my hand. That’s my true feelings. I never, in a million years, thought I’d be hanging on to the same title that Eddie Guerro held, the US Championship. It was one of my dreams, and now it was in my hands. I didn’t even sleep that night. My wife didn’t expect it, nobody in my family knew, I didn’t know until last minute, but it was one of the best moments of my life. I’m very grateful because of my fans. I wanted to quit so many times, but hearing my fans made me want to come back so much.”